Cloud Atlas - Page 2

LOL, you're right....they don't.

Hmmm....I thought it did reasonably well.

If RT means anything: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cloud_atlas_2012/ ...and 76% of the audience liked it as well, but considering nobody saw it I guess that's not very significative!

I saw Cloud Atlas and Atlas Shrugged (parts 1 and 2) . . . and enjoyed them. My impression is that adaptation for the screen improved both stories. Atlas Shrugged as a movie is much less turgid than the book . . . and I thought most of the structural changes and minor plot element additions to Cloud Atlas significantly advanced the underlying themes, although some of the book's story backgrounds that were excised from the movie version (presumably for run time considerations?) might better have been left in the screen version...

I was not confused by the word 'atlas' appearing in both movie titles . . . however when I went see Lincoln recently, I was surprised it made no mention of the titular character's life as a vampire hunter! It's clear that Speilberg should have removed the word "Lincoln" from his movie's title to avoid confusion with the earlier, lesser work, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
_

Chariots of Fire & Quest for Fire came out in the same year and I came across people who confused the two. And who here has not had conversation about a film and found the other person was confusing it will a similar titled movie?

Exactly.
Not everyone who goes out "to the movies" or watches at home is a film geek.

Disagree with me respectfully or disrespectfully. It won't change the fact that you're wrong.

Cloud Atlas is based on an enormously popular and recognizable recent book. Anyone who saw the movie trailer immediately connected it to the book of the exact same title. Absolutely no one on the face of the Earth saw a trailer for Cloud Atlas and confused it with the obscure Ayn Rand movie that opened on three screens and may have gotten a bad review in the Village Voice.

You might as well claim that The Three Stooges bombed because people saw the word "The" and confused it with The Phantom Menace 3D.

Cloud Atlas failed at the box office because people didn't like the looks of the trailer and had heard negative buzz about it. Simple as that. Had nothing to do with confusing it with a totally unrelated movie that nobody even knew existed.

RESPECTFULLY, I am not "wrong" (see below).

With whom?
Sorry, but I never heard of it.

You are assuming the vast majority of the movie-going public has read/heard of this book, but they haven't.
In fact, it has only sold a quarter of a million copies since publication in 2004.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/54461-this-week-s-bestsellers-october-22-2012.html

I suppose those copies of Cloud Atlas could have been passed around quite a bit these last 8 years, because....
According to mpaa.org, more than two-thirds of the U.S./Canada population (67%) – or 221.2 million people – went to the movies at least once in 2011.
Edited by oink - 12/8/12 at 3:39pm

Funny how that works. I think you're wrong and oink is right. Luckily for society saying something like "you're wrong" doesn't magically make it so...

oink makes a fair argument that people often do confuse similarly titled movies (I know I've been guilty of that mistake on at least two occasions). "The" being the reason "The Three Stooges" failed is just you reaching; now if there'd been some other "Stooges" film out, it'd be reasonable to assume the possibility that some of the failure was because of that other (poor) "Stooges" film. But that wasn't the case (and you know that).

As for the movie (Cloud Atlas), I'm looking forward to seeing it. I regret I didn't see it in theaters, but like everyone else, it seemed to come and go very quickly.

Yeah but he cannot lose face now, that would be terrible.

Josh was just being sarcastic... And I agree with him about that so-called confusion the Cloud Atlas title might have caused to some moviegoers...

Sorry to one and all....as a life-long Westerner, I am not hip to East Coast sarcasm.

'East Coast sarcasm' is slang talk for obnoxious jackass.

If oink wanted to claim that some people might have confused this:



With this:



He might have a valid argument. But confusing the Cloud Atlas movie with the Ayn Rand movie? No. No way. Never happened. Not to anyone, anywhere, at any time, ever.

You are assuming that the vast majority of the movie-going publish has seen/heard of the Atlas Shrugged movie, but they haven't. They didn't see the movie. They didn't see any trailers or TV commercials for it (because there weren't any TV commercials for it). They didn't read any reviews of it, because it never played in theaters anywhere near where they live. They had absolutely no clue that it existed at all.

I read that they changed the name of "John Carter" because "Mars Needs Moms" bombed. That sure helped, didn't it? Changing the name of this film to "Clouds" because of a movie no one heard of would be equally insane and futile. Perhaps 100 more easily confused people would have seen Cloud Atlas but that's about it.

At least on feb. 5th the confusion will be over cause the film will be out on Blu-ray

OK, once more, this time with feeling....

In 1991, a survey conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club asked club members what the most influential book in the respondent's life was. Rand's Atlas Shrugged was the second most popular choice, after the Bible. Rand's books continue to be widely sold and read, with 25 million copies sold as of 2007 and another 500,000 sold and 300,000 donated by the Ayn Rand Institute in 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_rand#CITEREFGladstein2009

To say a movie of A.S. wouldn't have garnered the attention of the press or public while Cloud Atlas (at 225,000 copies) would is ridiculous.
Google Search reveals 1.48 million hits for "Atlas Shrugged Movies Reviews"

My POINT is the word "Atlas" in the title of a movie was suicidal from a marketing POV.
From Rottentomatoes.com:
Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1 = 11% with 15,510 User Ratings.
Atlas Shrugged Pt. 2 = 5% with 8,297 User Ratings
Total B.O. = 8 million

The Shrugged movies were a failure, both critically and commercially (those damn numbers again!).
For better or worse, people pay attention to carnage, which is why people stop to look at car wrecks .
Edited by oink - 12/10/12 at 1:18pm

But the Atlas Shrugged movies manifestly didn't garner any attention. They had no promotional campaign to get people's attention. Did you ever see one TV commercial for either film? Did you ever see the trailer played in front of another movie you went to see? Did you see posters for it at your local cinema, billboards along the street, or placards on cabs and buses? Did you see banner ads declaring "Atlas Shrugged is the movie of the year!" at the top of web sites you visit?

No, you didn't. Because the movies didn't have any of those things. These movies flew completely under the pop culture radar.

Meanwhile, Cloud Atlas had plenty of trailers and TV spots, billboards, web ads, a viral marketing campaign and more. People knew this movie existed. They just chose not to see it.

Also, your claim that the Cloud Atlas book only sold 225k copies is suspect, and probably doesn't count e-books or audio books. I've read in other sources that at least a million copies were sold. More importantly, that would be a million copies recently sold, to people who are still alive today and might go to the movies.

This is a ridiculous argument we're having, and your side of it is completely insupportable.

Alright, alright. Can we move on to this movie now?

I could refute this, but......(see below ).

Sorry, sometimes I just can't help myself....

Ok. As I said earlier...

So I think Cloud Atlas might benefit from a Director's Cut revision . . . but it would probably be a 'hard sell' to deliver a (net) increase in the overall run time from the 172 minutes of the theatrical version!
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OP seems to have left the building for good so here are the latest news for Cloud Atlas on Blu-ray...

Available May 14th in North America with the following extra features:

• A Film Like No Other
• Everything is Connected
• Spaceships, Slaves & Sextets
• The Bold Science Fiction of Cloud Atlas
• The Impossible Adaptation
• The Essence of Acting
• Eternal Recurrence: Love, Life, and Longing in Cloud Atlas
• Standard DVD copy of the film
• UltraViolet digital copy of the film (expires 5/14/2015)

Official cover art:


Edited by Morpheo - 2/20/13 at 7:02am

Thanks for that info! I'm excited to see this one

Wow that's a really long release date from its theatrical release.

Is it still showing theatrically?

According to boxofficemojo not since january 24th...

"Cloud Atlas was a bit of an odd duck, but the film is the kind of quirky mind-trip that European audiences usually eat up. Strangely, the film has failed to get distribution across the Old World — until now — and that’s causing problems for the US Blu-ray release. The lack of even a theatrical run in the UK, France, Japan, Korea and a many other countries means that the movie, which isn’t even close to breaking even on its production budget, is losing out on some potentially huge markets that could bring in some much-needed box office revenue. Since Warner typically ships all discs region free, this means that people living in these places could just buy the Blu-ray before seeing it in cinemas, and that certainly wouldn’t help.

So the Blu-ray, which was originally schedule for February 5 release, has now been put on uncertain status at Amazon, but word around the industry campfire is that we’ll see it in physical form early this summer."

WOW, that's too bad...

Again, May 14th is now official...

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10515

The guys that brought you the crappy 2nd and 3rd parts of the Matrix Trilogy and the equally crappy V: For Vendetta... roll out another dud.

Didn't Hollywood learn anything?